This Is The Week That Was #53: Things Fall Apart

It’s dead easy, when you’re going through a rubbish patch, to feel like everything’s falling apart. When you can’t hold everything together, that’s just what happens. I’ve felt very much this way for weeks now, and all around me is the evidence that it’s not just in my head.

Falling Together

I’ve had to invest very heavily in inspirational quotes on Instagram – usually the reserve of Facebook Mums – to give me some straws to clutch at. Apparently, according to an account called something like ‘Spiritual Inspo Quotes’ or some such generic name, falling apart isn’t falling apart at all, but rather ‘falling together’. Aside from the fact that ‘falling together’ absolutely is not a thing. But, it makes me feel better and soothing internet quotes are my medicine of late.

And in fact, although not entirely ‘falling together’, I have been working really hard at rebuilding. You see, I’m from a family of problem solvers and I am the type of person who would rather fix something than just pretend it doesn’t exist.

Falling Apart

So the first thing that has fallen apart lately is my mental health. It’s not something I can ‘fix’ but I have been trying my best to ease things. I’ve been close to going to the GP to get some anti depressants – something that I’ve been putting off this time round – but just when I thought the only way forward was medication, something seemed to improve.

I don’t know whether it’s time – they say time is a healer but really it’s just the consolidation of new routines that helps your brain adapt – or the kindness of people around me trying to pick me up and help me keep going. I don’t know if I’m out of the woods or going to slip back down at any moment. I really don’t know. All I know is that there has at long last been moments where I’ve been able to get up and go to the gym and behave like I’m half human again.

When you fall apart on the inside, it’s perhaps no coincidence when you find yourself literally falling apart on the outside too. My skin has been dreadful, my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and bad dreams, shitty greasy hair and my entire body morphing into one walking talking scab.

Around me, inanimate things seem to be literally falling apart too. I’ve had my dad in building furniture for me in lieu of being able to build me a life where I’m not a total mess. Practical stuff he can do, and I’m grateful for his presence and support.

The garden, which I had plans to sort out this summer, then autumn, then before winter, is a miserable sight to look out onto when stood at the kitchen sink. Energy and money and some sort of zest for life could turn everything around. But then I’m short on all of those things.

Relationships fall apart and I leave texts unanswered, invitations swerved, and reduce my own child to tears with my own sadness and anger. It’s hard to reconcile motherly love with someone who’s stopped smiling as much when she’s zipping your coat up. That’s my priority and that’s what I’ve been working hard for. I don’t argue anymore when he wants to sleep in my bed and I save my tears until he’s asleep, when I sob silently into his blonde hair, so that I can keep my reserves of cheerfulness for the daytime.